Lifted from the comments,

That would be the advert currently trending for all the wrong reasons, and regarding which viewers’ feedback has now been disabled.

Says commenter Min,

Yes, they’ve often been rather sweet with an agreeable, universal sentiment. Missing friends, shyness, loneliness, not wanting to leave people out, etc. Hibernating bears. Machine-tooled emotional manipulation. Which is how a department-store Christmas ad should be.

This year, however, they’ve assumed we’ll be enchanted by rude, selfish, misbehaving children whose affection has to be bought with great effort and at great expense, in desperation. And the decision to make those children brown – because apparently you can’t have an advert without the statistically unlikely interracial couple – adds a dynamic that I somehow doubt was intended.

Commenter [+] quips,

What’s remarkable is that the project must have involved any number of highly-paid, supposedly clued-up experts, masters of nuance, and endless meetings, over months… and no bugger spotted how readily the ad lends itself to much less festive interpretations.

I watched it again this morning and am still processing just how weirdly misjudged it is.

For instance, that heartwarming moment when the scowling, diverse grandchildren shake their Christmas cards in annoyance, having found no money in them. Behaviour enabled, one assumes, by the ineffectual, unapologetic parents, who allow their offspring to wreck other people’s homes and to jump up and down on other people’s furniture.

And remember, we’re supposed to like these unparented brats, enough to care about pleasing them. And we’re supposed to identify with the grandma who wants these brats to love her, if only for a few minutes, before they presumably resume their scowling, ungrateful ways.

Feel that Christmas spirit, people.

It does rather suggest a gulf between, on the one hand, progressively-inclined John Lewis management and progressively-inclined London ad executives who think that sneaking trans flags into Christmas adverts watched by children is terribly clever – and on the other hand, actual John Lewis customers and the general public.

We’ve been here before, of course. When customers were expected to find charming the thought of their homes being trashed by a selfish, vamping, cross-dressing child.

And then there was the attempt to endear customers by announcing, very proudly, that they employ middle-aged transvestites with whipping fetishes because doing so results in “a better connection to our customers.” Thanks to these “identities we share.”

As I said at the time,

It’s hilariously insane. But in fairness, very now.

Being a “fur princess,” he “was born to sparkle like a queen.” Hence, of course, the tiaras, leis, turtlenecks, wigs, the copious mohair, the full-length fur.

This guy has a fetish for wearing dozens of layers of women’s clothing. He’s popped up in numerous Facebook groups, and demands to be called ‘princess’, and talks about how much he hates his wife and children because, for some reason, they don’t want to be seen in public with him https://t.co/EyKPxOwpgP

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) November 2, 2026

He sparkles more than would seem strictly necessary.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Lifted from the comments, another feat of progressive self-admiration:

Jean-Luc Picard remains the single most compelling vision of progressive politics I am familiar with — secular, rational, compassionate, egalitarian; a believer in progress & abundance but also duty, hard work, and a constant battle for self-improvement and improving the world. https://t.co/PQyh0qnouD

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 30, 2026

It’s curious that Mr Yglesias should pick a fictional character from a fictional world where commonplace human motivations have been done away with, simply written out of existence – a world with no discernible economic costs or constraints, and in which, as said character puts it, “money doesn’t exist.”

And as others note in the replies, it’s something of a stretch to imagine the modern progressive as somehow being driven by hard work and duty, or being defined by rationality. It’s almost funny.

Update, via the comments:

Dicentra adds, somewhat pointedly,

Referring to an interview with Star Trek writer Ronald D Moore. Specifically,

It’s an unconvincing conceit with no pay-off. It doesn’t even work dramatically. It adds nothing of significance in story-telling terms, only inconsistencies, more things one mustn’t think about.

Regarding Mr Yglesias, it’s hard not to trip over the vanity in play, the sheer indulgence of it.

Mr Yglesias’ chosen epitome of progressivism – which is to say, the epitome of his own politics – is a made-up world, the economics of which do not make sense, even according to its own writers, and in which 700-metre starships, equipped with Impossibility Engines, are built, one assumes joyfully, in great numbers, at no cost, by people who don’t get paid.

Mr Yglesias’ adventures in fantasy have been noted here before.

You have to really get in there. || The rise and fall and rise of Rome, in three minutes. || When you need more middle finger. || The itchiness was bothersome. || His is bigger. || Dog and human beings. || Women and power tools. || A brief history of the Cornish pasty, 1972. || A Scandal in Bohemia, 1984. || A job to which I would not be suited. || What are you? || I’m assuming your arrangements are less exciting than this. || Puppy relocation of note. || Three theories regarding pubic hair. || The progressive retail experience, parts 766 and 767. || On those pretentious land acknowledgements. || She doesn’t give you permission to arrest her. || Three-point turn. || The oven did it. || A lady of the left. || A lot of turtle. || Challenging stereotypes. || The thrill of flu season. || Osaka fireworks.

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And as it’s almost Hallowe’en, another unnerving tale:

Or, when you’re a public-school teacher and one of your colleagues suggests that you avoid eye contact with a pupil who, for no discernible reason, writes luridly and at length about you dying in horrible ways.

As the pupil in question happened to be black, some educators have taken umbrage at any acknowledgement of this detail. Olivia Mullins, apparently an expert in “equitable teaching,” has issued a decree that one isn’t allowed to use an image of “a dark skinned black child with a menacing expression” when recounting an incident, experienced first-hand, involving a dark skinned black child with a menacing expression.

Alternative images have subsequently been suggested.

Update, via the comments:

Chow Bag notes the inevitable twitchiness of Ms Mullins and adds,

It is, I think, hard to see how Ms Mullins’ hair-trigger aversion to Certain Things would be helpful. Though it’s not difficult to see how such attitudes might exacerbate the phenomenon and entrench it, not least by inhibiting normal corrective measures. And her attitude, her posture, is by no means uncommon among her peers. We’ve seen, quite vividly, how that plays out:

Mr McCormick’s article includes other examples of much the same mindset, a kind of weird displacement activity. A practised unrealism.

Including the female teacher whose way of addressing disturbing behaviour is to pretend that it isn’t happening. And assertions by supposed experts – again, female – that “There. Are. No. Bad. Kids.” And that even the most monstrous hell child can be saved, if only we sacrifice the opportunities and wellbeing of children who aren’t clearly sociopathic.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.